In this article, Ashley Nigro, Senior Social Media Strategist, will break down how to find the times that work best for both your brand and your audience to increase your engagement, your reach, and even your sales.
What You’ll Learn:
- What is the Best Time to Post on Facebook?
- How to Find the Best Time to Post on Facebook For Your Brand
- There May Not be One Best Time to Post
- Best Times to Post on Facebook By Day
- FAQs: Best Times to Post on Facebook
Expert Insights: When to Post On Facebook
If you’re looking for the best times to post on Facebook, I’ve found that this largely depends on your audience. Identifying the right times to post can significantly boost your Facebook marketing efforts in the long term.
Contrary to one-size-fits-all solutions, the optimal time to post varies significantly across brands, influenced by factors like audience demographics, industry, and content type. Conducting thorough social media audience analysis can reveal precise posting times tailored to your specific brand and audience needs.
It’s essential for brands to dive deep into their own Facebook analytics to understand when their audience is most active and responsive. This data-driven approach not only helps in building a consistent posting schedule tailored to your specific audience but also ensures that your content has the best chance of being seen and interacted with.
By aligning your posting schedule with your audience’s Facebook usage patterns, you can significantly increase the effectiveness of your social media strategy.
Pro Tip: Be sure to analyze the Posts section to see when your fans are online the most. You can find all the data you’ll need directly in the app.
What is the Best Time to Post on Facebook?
The best time to post on Facebook can vary depending on your target audience and industry. Generally, the ideal posting times can be influenced by when your audience is most active.
For instance, if you want to engage with mothers of newborns, posting during the night when they may be up feeding their babies could be strategic.
However, according to Influencer Marketing Hub, some optimal times for posting on Facebook are Wednesdays at 11 am and 1 pm.
When are most people on Facebook? Well, some other recommended times include:
- 9:00 am – Monday through Friday
- 11:00 am – Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday
- 3:00 pm – Monday and Tuesday
- 4:00 pm – Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
- 6:00 pm – Friday
If your goal is to boost engagement, focus on weekday posting, as Sunday tends to have the lowest engagement. The most consistent engagement occurs on weekdays between 9 am and 3 pm, typically when people are browsing Facebook at work.
Another study done by CoSchedule took different industry patterns into account.
CoSchedule’s research also considered different industry patterns, highlighting that the timing may vary based on how specific target markets use social media.
Both Influencer Marketing Hub and CoSchedule studies agree that posting during weekdays generally yields better results compared to weekends.
How to Find the Best Time to Post on Facebook For Your Brand
Finding the best time to post on Facebook for your brand involves understanding your target audience and tailoring your strategy to their preferences. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
Step 1: Know Your Target Audience
Understanding the demographics and behavior of your Facebook audience is crucial for creating content that resonates with them. Begin by answering key questions about your audience:
- What are their demographics? Age? Gender?
- What do they do for a living?
- Where do they live?
- What’s their highest level of education?
- What is their online behavior like?
- What are their preferred social networks and connections with brands?
By creating a comprehensive buyer persona, you can gain a deeper understanding of your Facebook audience and determine when they are most likely to use the platform.
A few examples:
- College students have different schedules than middle-aged professionals, so their online activity times differ.
- Stay-at-home moms may be more active on social media in the evening after their daily chores are done.
- Business executives may engage during early mornings or lunch breaks when they have fewer meetings scheduled.
Once you’ve defined your target audience, create content that caters to their specific preferences and behavior patterns.
For example, if you’re offering “mommy and me” dance lessons in a suburban area, your target persona might include:
- Demographics: Women aged 25-35
- First-time moms with toddlers
- Stay-at-home moms, work-from-home moms, or part-time working moms
- Residents of local suburban areas
- College-educated or higher
Step 2: Pay Attention to Time Zones
Consideration of time zones is crucial when determining the best posting times on Facebook, especially if your audience is spread across different regions. Here are some key points to keep in mind:
- It’s not just about knowing the time of day; it’s also about understanding the time zones of your audience. Different regions may be in different time zones, so you must adjust your posting schedule accordingly.
- To simplify this process, you can rely on industry standards. Schedule your posts based on where the majority of your audience is located. If you have a global audience, tools like Google Analytics can assist in identifying peak times across various time zones.
- In the United States, approximately 50% of the population is in the Eastern Time Zone, and when you combine the Eastern and Central Time Zones, you cover nearly 80% of the population. Additionally, these two time zones are only an hour apart, making it convenient for scheduling posts to reach a broad U.S. audience.
Step 3: Look at What the Stats Say
Here’s a summary of some insights and key takeaways from various sources:
- HubSpot suggests that the best times to post are at 9 am on any weekday or between 1 pm and 3 pm from Thursday through Sunday.
- Hootsuite recommends posting between noon and 3 pm on any weekday.
Key Points to Remember:
- These results should serve as general guidelines and a starting point for businesses new to Facebook. However, it’s recommended to conduct your research to find the best posting times that work specifically for your brand.
- Additionally, be mindful of not posting too frequently, as it can annoy users and lead to posts being labeled as spam.
- Experimenting with different times and monitoring the results over time will help you refine your posting strategy for optimal engagement.
Step 4: Use Tools and Analytics
Analyzing your Facebook page’s performance through analytics is a crucial part of optimizing your posting schedule. Here’s how you can use Facebook Insights to determine the best times to post:
- Start by posting consistently to gather data on your audience’s activity and engagement.
- Utilize Facebook Insights, which is a built-in tool provided by Facebook.
- To find your page Insights, go to your Facebook profile and click Insights at the top of your Page.
- To track when your fans are online, you’ll select Posts from the left-hand column. You’ll automatically be given a detailed chart that shows the days and times your fans are most active on Facebook.
- By default, you’ll see averages, but you can hover your cursor over specific times to see how activity compares to the average.
Analyzing this data will allow you to determine the best time slots to target the largest number of fans and optimize your posting schedule accordingly.
Want to know where to see the best times to post on Facebook for your brand? Facebook Insights is especially good for identifying the best time of day to post on Facebook based on the views, reach, visits, and follows you get.
Simply go into the Facebook Insights tool, go into the Insights tab with the three bars on the left, and choose Results.
You’ll see a summary of engagement metrics for the week, which can help you identify patterns when people are most or least engaged.
Finding The Timing of Your Most Successful Posts
In your Insights, you’ll also be able to see the timing of your most successful posts. You’ll start in the same place (the Posts section of Page Insights) and select All Posts Published under the chart.
The Published column will tell you the exact date and time each post was published. Using this data, you can sort through and start to identify common themes or trends regarding publishing times and higher engagement rates.
Keep in mind, that tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and HubSpot streamline the process of measuring and optimizing your brand’s social media presence, leading to better engagement and improved overall performance.
Among other things, these tools can help you identify the best posting times, improve audience targeting, and uncover insights into audience demographics and behavior.
Step 5: Schedule Your Posts Using Social Media Automation
After analyzing your Insights, it’s crucial to implement your findings effectively. One way to do this is through social media automation tools. There are plenty of automation tools to choose from, but we use Sprout Social.
Once you’ve created an account and connected your social media accounts, you’ll enter your content and use the scheduling settings to choose the exact day and time you would like your post to run.
Sprout Social, and other scheduling tools, help your social content stay consistent by allowing you to batch your content and post on a schedule.
Step 6: Consider The Best Time to Run Ads
In the ever-changing landscape of Facebook, running ads at optimal times can have a significant impact on your advertising success. Here are some key benefits of running ads strategically:
- Boost Reach: Facebook Ads can help by boosting the reach of selected posts beyond the limitations of organic reach, ensuring that your message reaches a broader audience.
- Offer Targeted Exposure: Facebook Ads can efficiently target specific user groups based on demographics, behavior, and interests, which complements organic posts that rely on the existing followership.
- Increase Brand Awareness: Facebook Ads can be used to create increased awareness of your brand’s content, which can work symbiotically with your organic content in creating and supporting brand recognition and trust.
- Drive Traffic and Conversions: Paid ads can help drive traffic and conversions by reaching users who aren’t already aware of or following your brand.
- Promote Testing and Optimizing Content: Insights gained from performance metrics can be used to optimize both paid and organic content, enhancing overall strategy effectiveness.
Also, be sure to test different times and analyze the results, which is key to finding the best times to post on Facebook for your brand specifically.
Based on your engagement goals, regularly monitor metrics and see when people connect the most. For example, if your goal is more likes, you’ll want to pinpoint the best time to post on Facebook for likes over other kinds of engagement.
Engagement trends and Facebook algorithm changes will help you determine how to adjust to further identify the best days and times to post on Facebook.
There May Not Be a Single Best Time to Post
Despite all the data in the world, it’s nearly impossible to draw definite conclusions or determine a one-size-fits-all approach.
According to the company’s most recent investment report, Facebook currently has roughly 3.03 billion monthly active users, which is more users than any other social media platform.
This activity is a blessing and a curse. Yes, at least part of your audience is almost sure to be there. But so are all of your competitors.
Increased competition means less exposure for your brand, and with such fierce competition, the most popular times to post could be the worst for your business, as you’re that much more likely to get lost in the shuffle.
Because of this, it’s increasingly important for you to rely on your own analytics and engagement rates to narrow down the times that work best for you.
This chart outlines the best times to post on Facebook, broken down for each day of the week:
Best Times to Post on Facebook By Day
| MONDAY | 9 am, 11 am, 3 pm |
| TUESDAY | 9 am, 11 am, 3 pm |
| WEDNESDAY | 9 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm |
| THURSDAY | 9 am, 11 am, 4 pm |
| FRIDAY | 11 am, 4 pm, 6 pm |
| SATURDAY | between 10 am and 2 pm |
| SUNDAY | between 9 am and 2 pm *least active day |
You’ll also want to ask, “What are the specific days when most people are on Facebook?”
According to data from Buffer, generally, the best day of the week to post on Facebook is Friday, which sees the most engagement throughout the entire day. Meanwhile, the worst days are Saturday and Sunday, which see far less engagement compared to other days of the week.
Finding the Best Time of Day to Post on Facebook by Objective
You should also consider the objective you want to achieve with your posts. For example, the following are the best days and times to post on Facebook for key metrics:
- For Likes: The best time to post on Facebook for likes is typically at peak engagement hours, when people are actively browsing and scrolling their Facebook feeds for a few minutes and throw out a few likes.
- For Clicks: Meanwhile, a good time to post on Facebook for clicks is usually around midday, when people are taking a break and want to consume content beyond Facebook.
- For Shares/Comments: People tend to connect with posts through shares and comments on the platform during the weekends or evenings, but keep in mind that weekends are the times that generally see the least engagement.
Choosing the Best Times to Post on Facebook by Audience Type
You must also consider the type of audience you want to target to identify a good time to post on Facebook.
Let’s say you want to target young professionals. In these instances, you may find that your audience takes some time in the midday during the week to like, share, and click, likely while on their lunch break.
Meanwhile, stay-at-home parents will probably be more active on Facebook in the morning and during their children’s naptimes in the afternoon.
When targeting international audiences, time zones will heavily influence the best time of day to post on Facebook. Consider which countries will be active when posting based on their respective times.
FAQs: Best Times to Post on Facebook
1. What is the best time to post on Facebook for maximum exposure?
Multiple studies have cited that the best day to post on Facebook for maximum exposure is either:
- Saturday and Sunday
- Thursday and Friday
- Wednesday
In general, the best time of day to post to Facebook for maximum exposure is either:
- 1 PM
- 3 PM
- 9 AM
As a rule of thumb, posts published during those times receive higher engagement and in turn, the Facebook algorithm gives them greater exposure.
2. When is the best time to post on Sunday?
As we’ve seen, the weekend is a great time to get engagement, and that’s especially true if you post on Sunday.
Your content isn’t competing with other businesses that take the weekends off.
As a rule of thumb, it’s best to post on Sunday before 8 AM and after 8 PM. There are a couple of possible explanations as to why those times work so well.
First, when you post early in the morning, you give yourself a chance to catch early risers and people who don’t like to sleep in.
When you post later at night, you can get your brand in front of people who are checking social media after dinner and before going to bed for the night.
3. What Is the best time to post on Facebook in 2024?
There are numerous studies that have sought to answer this question.
According to one study from Elle & Co., the best days to post on Facebook are Saturday and Sunday. The best time is 1 PM CST.
Another study by Fast Company says that the best time to share on Facebook is between 11 AM and 4 PM CST. That research found that Wednesday is the best day to post.
Uniclix found that the best time to post on Facebook is Wednesday, with Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday also having higher engagement rates.
Unfortunately, those studies don’t always agree.
However, you can take a look at patterns within all the research and get somewhat of a consensus. That’s what Coschedule did.
The company aggregated 25 social media studies from leading sources like Hootsuite, Buffer, HubSpot, and KissMetrics to determine the best times to post on social media in exhaustive analyses.
When Coschedule aggregated the studies, the company found that the best time to post on Facebook is between Thursday and Sunday at 9 AM CST, 1 PM CST, or 4 PM CST.
4. Is there a best time to post on Facebook for likes?
Possibly.
According to a detailed study from Sprout, the most consistent engagement is on weekdays from 9 AM to 3 PM CST.
Wednesday offers the best opportunity for likes, and according to the study traffic steadily increases leading up to the middle of the week, and then dwindles off again heading into the weekend.
However, just because activity peaks at certain times doesn’t mean those times are best for you to post. Always test your marketing efforts and check your analytics to see what works best for your brand.
If you’re concerned about engagement, you should focus not only on when you post but also on what you post. People simply aren’t going to react if the content isn’t relevant to them.
5. What is the most active time on Facebook?
Sprout Social has shown that Facebook’s highest levels of engagement are on Tuesdays through Thursdays, from 8 AM – 3 PM CST, with the most active day being Wednesday at 11 AM CST and again at 1 PM – 2 PM CST.
6. Is it better to post on Facebook Thursday or Friday?
Both days have good post-potential, though it depends on your market. Thursdays tend to have consistent engagement between 8 am and 3 pm, while Friday’s user activity is best when leveraged around 11 a.m. When unsure when to post, you can always play it safe and keep your post times no earlier than 7 am and no later than 5 pm.
7. How does content type affect the best time to post on Facebook?
Content type can absolutely affect the best time to post on Facebook, as different formats and categories may appeal to users during different parts of the day.
Understanding the preferences and consumption patterns of your target audience is essential for determining the best posting time for specific content types.
8. Can seasonal trends impact the best times to post on Facebook?
People’s behaviors on social media can change based on factors like holidays, weather, and cultural events, which affects the optimal times for posting content on Facebook.
Also, keep in mind that different industries might observe different seasonal trends. For example, an ecommerce business might observe more activity during the holiday shopping season, and a fitness-related business might see increased engagement after New Year’s when people are focusing on resolutions.
9. How should businesses adjust posting times for international audiences?
Start by identifying your key markets.: Then, consider peak hours in major time zones. Next, create multiple posting schedules to cater to the different time zones. Tailor content to different regions by paying attention to language, culture, etc. As you go be sure to monitor and refine your posting schedule, being sure to leverage the tools available to you within your posting platforms.
10. What’s the impact of Facebook algorithm changes on optimal posting times?
Facebook’s algorithm tends to prioritize posts with high engagement, especially if they’re from people or pages the user interacts with frequently.
Post timing can influence the initial engagement a post receives, and this early engagement is critical.
11. How often should a business re-evaluate its posting schedule?
Best practices usually suggest reviewing and adjusting your social media engagement strategies, including Facebook posting schedules, at least once every quarter. However, your business can benefit from monthly evaluations as they provide a more immediate understanding of changes in engagement trends.
Re-evaluation and adjustments should be made immediately when a significant event occurs. This includes changes in Facebook’s algorithms, significant shifts in audience behavior, launching a new product or service, or adapting to seasonal trends.
Make sure to use Facebook’s analytics tools to assist in your evaluations, helping you to understand user behavior better and assisting in making data-driven decisions.
12. What’s the best time of day to post on Facebook?
What is the best time to post on Facebook? The answer to this will depend on numerous factors, with a big one being your industry and its respective target audiences.
Generally, midday throughout the week is the best time to post, usually around 11 AM, but 9 AM and 4 PM are also popular times.
When are the best times to post on Facebook for specific business types? Here are some of the other best times to post on Facebook based on the industry:
- Retail and ecommerce: The mornings when people are often shopping online
- Tech: Mornings on weekdays
- Healthcare: Mid-morning breaks between 10 AM to 12 PM
- Travel and Hospitality: Weekends are popular in this industry around 9 to 11 AM
13. How many posts should businesses share per day?
The number of posts you share every day will also depend on your audience and what it wants to see from you. It’s in your best interest to post frequently to keep audiences engaged and loyal, ideally posting just about every day.
So, how many posts do businesses post on average per day? According to Sprout Social, most consumers believe one or two daily posts are best for brands.
14. What seasonal or cultural trends should businesses consider?
Depending on your audience, you should also take seasonal and cultural trends when deciding on the best times to post on Facebook.
For instance, what is the best time to post on Facebook when people are celebrating specific holidays? See when your competitors are posting and which posts drive the most engagement around particular seasons or trends.
Also, research audiences in different countries or regions, as their cultural trends can differ greatly and impact their engagement. For example, cultures observing Yom Kippur and other cultural holidays will see time spent away from technology, including social media sites.
15. Where can I find my best posting times?
It’s also important to know where to see the best time to post on Facebook.
Thankfully, Facebook Insights makes it easy. To view your best posting times using this tool, simply log into Insights, choose the Insights tab on your dashboard, and choose the Results tab within the Insights dashboard.
Here, you can see views, reach, visits, and follows for each day across a week. You can also set goals to measure success.
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